‘So—’ Marie beams a smile that doesn’t reach the rest of her face. Her lipstick has stained a patch of her nicotine-yellow teeth crimson.

‘I can’t do it this year,’ Carly cuts in. ‘I just can’t.’

The atmosphere, already heavy, thickens. I take a sip of my tea, trying to recall whether Marie had rested the teaspoon on the draining board before she fished out my teabag.

‘I know it’s difficult this year—’ Marie’s knee jiggles. She tugs her jumper down over her hands.

‘It’s difficult every bloody year.’ Carly pushes her hair away from her face. Her sleeve rides up, displaying the comma she has tattooed on her wrist.

She’s right.

Each year around the anniversary of our abduction Marie’s always desperate to rake it over. Unwilling to let the dying embers of our trauma crumble to ashes.

It wasn’t as bad as we thought, was it?

It’s made us into the people we are today.

It’s as though she wants to make it into something else, something different.

She can’t.

I don’t know why, perhaps it’s the only way she can handle it. We all cope the best we can, Carly not allowing herself to love anyone new, me with my routines.

‘But…’ Marie continues as though Carly hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s twenty years and I’ve been approached by a journalist—’

‘We’ve all been approached by journalists these past few months.’ That was a given; THE SINCLAIR SISTERS – WHERE ARE THEY NOW? I don’t like the direction the conversation is going in.

‘She wants us to go on TV to mark twenty years. It’d be live, of course, that only gives us a few days to prep—’

‘Absolutely not,’ Carly says firmly.

‘I know you don’t enjoy being in the spotlight, but I’ll take the lead. You don’t have to say much as long as you’re there,’ Marie says matter-of-factly. This would be her starring role, us her supporting cast. ‘Leah?’

‘There’s nothing worse I can think of than going through it all again.’

I can just say no.

‘You said yes last time,’ Marie says.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat. We were offered a book deal around the tenth anniversary. Carly and I weren’t interested but Marie had begged, said the exposure might kick-start her career and we so wanted her to succeed. My therapist at the time thought it might do us good to share our story. Take away the stigma and the shame that we feel; that I feel, at least. She thought if we spoke about it exclusively to one source it would stop the vultures picking over the rest of our lives. We could finally move on. The publisher introduced us to a ghost writer. All we had to do was meet him a few times while he recorded our stories on a dictaphone and that was it. Six figures each. We weren’t expected to write a single word ourselves.

‘The book deal was years ago,’ I say to Marie. ‘Things are different now. I’ve Archie to think about.’